The Before
by Haripoons
Summary: Everyone's read the same self-insert save the world story, but what if more than one person woke up in a new body? What if the entire rookie nine, and more, was comprised of normal people from a normal world? What if there were fifty of them, and they were all formerly seniors at the same high school? A very different take on SIs.


Stories are about what-ifs.

What if one person from our world (the normal world, the _real_ world) was reincarnated as a Naruto character?

What if they were old?

What if they were young?

What if they were a former member of the special forces? A teacher? A college student? A nuclear physicist?

Would they change everything? Save everyone? Would they change nothing? Become disillusioned and commit suicide? Choose the path of evil, maybe?

Well . . . what if there was more than one at the same time? What if there were two? What if they knew each other? What if they found each other and decided to make a change together?

What if. What if. What if.

So many possibilities. So many potential stories. Out of everything that could have happened, our story seems like one of the least realistic, the least possible.

Please try to suspend your disbelief.

I know what you're probably thinking. You're thinking that maybe, just maybe, you would buy one person somehow waking up in the obviously fictional Naruto universe. Maybe you would even see the possibility (if you were drunk enough) of reincarnation happening to two people.

But an entire fifty student class of seniors in high school ALL being reincarnated into Narutoland within one year of each other?

Yeah. When you put it like that it sounds pretty ridiculous.

Unfortunately for you (although more unfortunately for us) life doesn't always put us on the path that makes the most sense.

And _yes_, I can see you about to start quoting Occam's Razor at me (or at this piece of paper that I've written and that you're reading). _The simplest explanation is the likeliest._ And the simplest explanation is that what you're reading is a lie. A fairy tale. A hallucination. A prank.

Well. I can't prove anything to you. I'm not really here after all. For all I know, no one will read this for hundreds of years. Or even thousands. All I can ask, all _we _can ask, is that you listen. We thought that someone should remember our story.

And be careful. Because what happened to us _can_ happen to you. Occam's Razor be damned.

You might be wondering who _I_ am. Which of the fifty kids is the one writing the story? Am I special? Am I the one that was reincarnated as a main character?

Don't get too excited. I'm nothing special. I'm writing this for the sole reason that I got consistent A's in English class back in the _real _world, and I wanted to write my own book someday. Back when I was seventeen. Well, this is that someday, I suppose, although it's nothing like I'd imagined.

You still don't believe me I'm sure. And, like I said, I have no way to make you believe our story. I probably wouldn't in your position.

If you're that desperate for proof though . . . well. Go on the internet (assuming the internet still exists). Look up a class of fifty kids that all died at the same time (or maybe they all disappeared).

I can't guarantee you'll find anything, of course.

The government may have covered it up. Or maybe it was attributed to a gas leak. Maybe people said that we were all on some kind of new drug that we'd stupidly taken, and that it killed us. Or maybe our souls split and walking, talking, living clones of us are still kicking. Still living in the homeworld.

All I can say for sure, is that if_ it_ starts happening to you, _run_. Or kill yourself. Because the world where Naruto lives may seem like a dream from the outside. But the reality is more of a nightmare.

We've done the best we can, _are _doing the best we can, but at the end of the day, we have to wonder if it's worth it. I can't say objectively anymore. I'm too deep into this new life of mine. It's been too many years that I've been here and not home.

So read. Read and evaluate and decide. Is it worth it?

And remember us. _Please_. Because our greatest fear is being swallowed up by time and space and the apathy of everyone in this goddamned Naruto dimension. If we have to live in this hellscape, we want to be damn well sure that we did _something_ to change it. Or at the very least, prepare you for what might be coming.

But enough talk. You'll either read or you won't, and we won't be there to force you either way.

Here is our story.

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My last memory of my old life was the class meeting. There were fifty of us, and we were sitting in a cramped classroom, some of us nearly spilling out into the hall due to the shortage of space.

I don't remember what we were being yelled at for. Maybe it was the drinking some of us had done at the last school dance. Maybe the teachers had caught wind of our plans for a senior prank. Maybe one too many dress code violations had finally pushed the school staff over the edge.

I remember a sudden wave of dizziness. I started swaying in place, feeling really off-kilter. I stared across the table at Max, who was rubbing his temples and grimacing.

Everyone said that they felt something. Some were dizzy. Some had headaches. Some started flashing hot and cold. Mia said she got cramps and thought it must be her period. It wasn't, obviously.

A second later, literally a second, I blacked out. And according to everyone else, so did they. And that was it.

To this day, I wonder what it was that sent us here. To this other world. Was it something about the location of the classroom? We've never come into contact with any of the teachers who were yelling at us when it happened. And the few students who'd been looking at them just before the blackout said they all looked fine.

It's still a mystery, what caused this whole thing. Beth and Tommy said they think it might be- But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sorry. I have the tendency to ramble sometimes. I'll try my best to tell the story in chronological order so that it's less confusing for you.

So. To recap, we all felt odd the moment before it happened. All fifty of us (by some stroke of fate, no one was home sick that day). And after we simultaneously blacked out, we woke up.

It was terrifying.

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I'll spare you all the gory details of being an infant. All the trauma that came with having a fully developed consciousness in a body I couldn't control.

It sucked. Enough said.

I worked out that I'd been reincarnated pretty quickly (not that it was hard since I experienced being an infant with all my old memories), but I didn't realize exactly _where_ I was until the age of three.

I'm one of the luckier ones in our merry band of misfit reincarnees. I'd actually read Naruto. I wasn't the hugest fan (only one girl in our class knew everything about everything), but I knew enough that I could recognize and name all of the major characters, and I had a somewhat decent grasp of the overall plot line.

I was born to a civilian family, which meant that I had little to no contact with shinobi. The manga would have you believe that the ninja and the ordinary villagers are constantly interacting.

That just wasn't true.

The shinobi tended to avoid the civilian side of life as much as possible. There were bars, shops, and stands_ just_ for ninja hidden away in little niches in all the "bad" parts of Konohagakure. And the fact was, shinobi life was so far removed from anything considered "normal," that there just wasn't a lot of opportunity for the ordinary people and the glorified murderers to mix.

I can almost see you stopping short. Wondering why I called the shiny, sparkly ninja "glorified murders." _But aren't the Konoha shinobi the good guys in the story?_ Patience. That comes later.

I think people also wanted to forget that they were living in what was essentially a military dictatorship where any one of their supposed "protectors" could go insane and kill them at any time. The manga makes it seem like the civilians have some sort of power over the shinobi through the Council. Not true. Every concession made to the civilians was to force them to play directly into the hands of what the _real_ village leaders (shinobi, of course) wanted.

So until I was three, there was nothing to make me realize I was living the Naruto story. I didn't see anyone wall-walking or any amazingly inhuman feats of strength or even a leaf headband.

But when I turned three, my mother, Kaa-chan, decided it was time for me to socialize. She walked me to the park about four blocks from our house. Although it was less a park and more a dilapidated swing set and a grungy sandbox.

There was a little boy sitting on one of the swings (looking about my age) with his head down and his hands tightly grasping the rusty, chain-link metal that the swing hung from, while his legs dangled.

"Go play," Kaa-chan encouraged me with a gentle push to my back.

I'd been hiding my seventeen-year-old's intelligence so far, waiting to learn more about the life I'd been reincarnated into before I revealed that I was a "genius."

So Kaa-chan thought I was just a normal kid. And if she wanted me to play, I was going to play.

Woodchips crunched under my feet as I made my way towards the boy. My mother followed stealthily behind me, as though trying to escape my notice (if my mental age fit my physical one, she probably would have). When I got about ten steps away, the boy looked up.

I gasped, and absently registered Kaa-chan doing the same thing. The boy's hair was a vivid yellow, and arresting blue eyes shone from his face. His distinctive coloring, combined with three odd-looking whisker marks on each cheek, was what stopped me in my tracks.

A whisper of realization had barely formed in my mind when Kaa-chan grabbed me roughly by the hand and started dragging me home.

"K-kaa-chan?" I murmured, making my voice wobble.

She didn't respond, but I heard her whisper "Demon fox" under her breath.

That clinched it.

Naruto. The boy on the swings had been Naruto. And I was living in the Naruto world.

I guess it's just evidence that human beings are incredibly self-centered, but I never even considered that there might be others. I had a deep-seated belief that I was special. That I was the only one. That I was alone.

That belief would change very soon.

**A/N: So. What do you think of the premise for this story? Also the longer and more detailed you review the more I'll love you forever. Hint. Hint.**


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